Formula 1 is sometimes stranger than fiction and on Wednesday evening in Australia a security guard at Albert Park was somewhat shocked when she encountered an intruder at the track, wearing a black balaclava.

Craig Pollock was much in evidence in the F1 paddock in Australia and when asked what his role was for the weekend he replied that he was there is his capacity as "owner" of British American Racing and manager of Jacques Villeneuve.

The decision of a French court to sell TWR the major assets of Prost Grand Prix for a tiny sum of money is an extraordinary one and the reaction in France is going to be interesting because the deal leaves Prost's creditors with little hope of getting any money back.

Arrows unveiled its livery to the public in Melbourne on Wednesday morning, just two days before the new A23 will take to the Albert Park circuit in the hands of Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Enrique Bernoldi.

Ron Dennis is never backward in coming forward when it comes to complaining about the international automobile federation and in a letter to all the other team bosses has criticized the FIA for the way it handles the regulations in Formula 1.

The British legal firm Herbert Smith has been granted the honor of being "Competition Team of the Year" for its defense of the international automobile federation during the European Commission's investigation into competition issues in motorsport.

As the Arrows team was launching its Formula 1 program for 2002 in Melbourne, a curious rumor surfaced in Paris with word that the Tribunal de Commerce of Versailles is studying a last-minute attempt to keep a 12th Formula 1 team going.

The race to be the first Middle Eastern country to host a World Championship Grand Prix is now on and despite Beirut having been talking about the idea for five years, it looks like Bahrain is going to get there first.

The organizers of the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne are always full of good ideas and to help promote the race this year they have decided to use four "big heads": Michael and Ralf Schumacher, David Coulthard and Juan Pablo Montoya.

As we exclusively predicted a couple of weeks ago Deutsche Post is to take over the title sponsorship of the Jordan team with its DHL courier company expected to be given the naming rights for the next three years.

There was not much surprising about the launch of the DHL Jordan Honda team in a hangar at Brussels Airport - a DHL hub - except that there was very little in the way of backing from Benson & Hedges and am awful lot of support from DHL and its parent company Deutsche Post.

Health officials from the European countries have issued what they are calling the Warsaw Declaration for a Tobacco-Free Europe, throwing their support behind the World Health Organization's plans to ban tobacco advertising around the world.

Times are tough in the car industry at the moment and on Monday the organizers of the 69th Turin Motor Show announced that the show in April is to be cancelled because most of the big car manufacturers have pulled out.

The hit quiz show "Who wants to be a millionaire?" helped out a Jaguar Racing designer on Monday, Chris Martin one of John Russell's design team at Milton Keynes taking home $50,000 to brighten up his week.

Patrick Head, the technical director of Williams says that the different characteristics of the Michelin and Bridgestone tires this year could result in some fascinating qualifying and race strategies.

Richard Burden, the British Member of Parliament for Birmingham Northfield, has been appointed by the Sports Minister Richard Caborn to work as a liaison between the government of and the motorsport industry.

The British Government has steered well clear of the motorsport industry in recent years, largely because of the unfortunate scandal involving a payment of $1.6m to the Labour Party by Bernie Ecclestone.

The latest word in Formula 1 circles is that Bernie Ecclestone is going to buy back the company which owns the commercial rights of Grand Prix racing but will do so in league with DaimlerChrysler and Fiat, the major players in the plan to launch a new manufacturer-backed World Championship.

Formula 1 fan Sheikh Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa of Bahrain is campaigning for a race to be held in the country within the next few years - and he's a powerful fellow as he proved last week when he decided to declare Bahrain a constitutional monarchy and switched from being an Emir to becoming King Hamad.

The ranks of the famed French radio reporters will be slashed in Formula 1 this year with the announcement that Radio Monte Carlo has bought the exclusive French rights to the World Championship from Formula One Administration.

Now that Tom Walkinshaw and Arrows has sorted out who will drive the new A23 in the coming season, the team has announced that they will officially launch the new chassis in Melbourne just days before the opening round of the 2002 season.

The demise of the DAMS Formula 3000 project has released longtime engineer Claude Galopin onto the job market. Galopin is a former Ligier engineer who became a designer with AGS and then went back to Ligier to design for the team.

Renault is going to need all the help it can get from its F1 program as its operating profits fell 77% because of the recession and the fact that the company is now beginning to suffer from an ageing product range.

Werner Klatten, the boss of EM.TV, has revealed that his company still owns 16.7% of SLEC because a deal to sell those shares to Kirch has never been completed and at the moment the shares cannot be sold as they are being used to secure a loan with the Bayerische Landesbank.

There is a feeling in Formula 1 circles that the planned automobile manufacturer World Championship in 2008 will never be a success because of the changing needs and the changing faces in the automobile world.

There is expected to be much talk of brakes when the new season gets underway in Australia as there are more than a few engineers who feel that brakes which are being cooled with what are effectively turbines are actually being used because they help to improve the flow of air over the front end of the car.

New Ferraris always break lap records and the drivers always say that they are "promising" so Michael Schumacher's much-publicized first laps with the F2002 at the weekend should not be taken too seriously.

Gary Paffett, a McLaren test driver and something of a protege for the team, raced in German Formula 3 last season, and while he did not win many races he was nonetheless right up there with the frontrunning teams.

Haymarket Publishing has long been the leading publishing business in motor racing but despite occasional forays into promotional magazines for F1 teams and car manufacturers the company has managed to maintain the reputation of being relatively independent.

The report of the Victorian State Coroner Graeme Johnstone into the death of marshal Graeme Berveridge in an accident during last year's Australian GP was a controversial document, ruling as it did that the accident was "avoidable".

Giorgio Ascanelli, the head of research and development at Ferrari, has been transferred to be the new technical head of sporting operations at Maserati. He will be replaced in his role at Ferrari by Ignazio Lunetta.

It has been a destructive couple of days in Formula 1 circles with David Coulthard rolling a McLaren on Friday in Barcelona and Heinz-Harald Frentzen having two high-speed rear wing failures with his Arrows in Valencia on Saturday.

Jos Verstappen has a right to be less than pleased with life at the moment but to add insult to injury he says he has not heard from the Arrows team that his services will not be required in 2002 - except by reading it on the team website.

Like many of the Formula 1 teams Ferrari has worked hard on its front-end aerodynamics with the lower suspension mounting points being located beneath the chassis itself attached to a longitudinal underbody "fin".

The Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper is reporting that the Kirch media group is under pressure from the German government to sell off its non-core assets to avoid being swallowed up by a foreign media business.

The Court of Appeal in London has rejected the appeal by the Arrows Formula 1 team against a ruling in February last year that the team should pay Pedro Diniz $700,000 in compensation after it failed to convince a court that Diniz broke his contract with Arrows at the end of 1998.

The Laguna Seca racing circuit has started work on $15m upgrading program which will result in the circuit finally getting permanent garages with VIP hospitality suites above them and a brand new media center and race control building.

Steve Nichols, the technical director of Jaguar Racing, has been dropped by the troubled racing team and while the news is not exactly a big surprise given the performance of the Jaguar-Cosworth R3 in recent tests, it is not going to make life any easier for the team as it tries to sort out the problems.

Yesterday we hinted that there was about to be a reshuffle amongst some of the top engineers in F1 and rumors have already begun that Egbahl Hamidy is about to depart Jordan Grand Prix and may be replaced by Renault F1's Pat Symonds.

The liquidation of Prost Grand Prix will free up a number of team personnel to work with other Formula 1 teams. The team's managing-director Joan Villadelprat will be one man who should soon be snapped up.

The Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne is due to take place a month from now but the date remains provisional at the moment because of the legal implications that might exist in the report and recommendations of the Melbourne coroner.

As we predicted a week ago, Australian rising star Ryan Briscoe will be racing a Ferrari sportscar at Albert Park in order to learn the race track in preparation for his F1 debut which is expected to take place in 2003.

With less than a month to go now before the start of the Formula 1 World Championship in Australia, the race in Melbourne remains provisional on the F1 calendar pending the delivery of the Coroner's Report into the death of track marshal Graeme Beveridge during last year's race.

The cable company United Pan-Europe Communications, the parent company of Arrows sponsor Chello, has announced plans to pay off $7bn of debt by issuing new shares, thus diluting the existing shareholdings.

Antonio Pizzonia was the sole test driver for Williams on Friday in Barcelona, and, in 74 laps of the Circuit de Catalunya, the Brazilian out-paced the rest of the field by more than half a second in an FW23 fitted with the new BMW engine.